Alleged to depict J.S. Bach during his tenure as Capellmeister to Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Cöthen, between 1717 and 1723.
Its identification as a picture of J.S. Bach was only guesswork and has been strongly opposed, doubts over its authenticity being based partly on the geographical distance between the portraitist, who came from Esslingen and worked for a time at the Bayreuth court, and Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, who presumably commissioned this large portrait, and partly on the difficulty of reconciling the latest possible date of commission (1722/23) with the artist’s dates (1702-1774). On the other hand Freyse (II, VI) has presented all the essential arguments: for its authentication and dating (1720) with complete expertise. On the evidence of ophthalmological links in the chain of facial evidence even Besseler (I) has included it in his "Five Genuine Portraits".

In 1897 it was discovered by chance by the Bamberg conservator Max Hartmann in the house of a master baker in Bayreuth, whose grandfather had been a gardener at the new castle from about 1820 to 1830 and apparently acquired some discarded paintings. After Hartmann had restored it, it was bought by Oskar von Hase, director of the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, and in 1907 given to the newly opened Bach-Museum in Eisenach. Otto Landmann was the first to report on it in the same year.